This was the first book we reviewed for our Next Chapter Book Club and I think we picked a great one to start us off! We read Slay by Brittney Morris.
Synopsis: By day, seventeen-year-old Kiera Johnson is an honors student, a math tutor, and one of the only Black kids at Jefferson Academy. But at home, she joins hundreds of thousands of Black gamers who duel worldwide as Nubian personas in the secret multiplayer online role-playing card game, SLAY. No one knows Kiera is the game developer, not her friends, her family, not even her boyfriend, Malcolm, who believes video games are partially responsible for the “downfall of the Black man.”
But when a teen in Kansas City is murdered over a dispute in the SLAY world, news of the game reaches mainstream media, and SLAY is labeled a racist, exclusionist, violent hub for thugs and criminals. Even worse, an anonymous troll infiltrates the game, threatening to sue Kiera for “anti-white discrimination.”
Driven to save the only world in which she can be herself, Kiera must preserve her secret identity and harness what it means to be unapologetically Black in a world intimidated by Blackness. But can she protect her game without losing herself in the process?
This book was fantastic! I absolutely loved it and am so glad I read it. This was my first time using and audiobook and I loved that their characters had different people voicing them as it really enriched the experience.
I was very impressed with Kiera as she developed an entire MMO game and she is still a teenager. I am a web developer so I know how hard that is. I also really liked her sister Steph and how she would always stand up for Keira and everything that she believed in. She also wouldn’t hesitate to educate someone if they were being ignorant.
I enjoyed that it was similar to Ready Player One with the main portion of the book taking place in this virtual world that Keira created. The book also deals with a lot of social issues that need attention brought to them so I was very happy with that and how the characters dealt with these situations.
There were some twists that I wasn’t expecting and I think it was done very well! I would definitely read more books by Brittney Morris!
Book Rating: 5/5
You can buy this book on Amazon and find it on Goodreads.
Disclaimer: I read this book because I wanted to. I was in no way compensated for my review.
An author and friend of mine recently released another book that you should check out. It is called The Little Breadwinner: War and Survival in the Salvadoran Heartland by Lucia Mann.
Synopsis: FROM 1980 TO 1992, A TURBULENT CIVIL WAR ravaged the Central American state of El Salvador, claiming the lives of approximately 75,000 Salvadorans. The Little Breadwinner is a story of tyrannized, frightened families—mostly poor peasants, indigenous peoples, and child farm workers—whose lives signified nothing to the military death squads.
Lucia Mann, who was in El Salvador at the time, recalls this vivid historical portrait of human rights violations during and after the “dirty” war between the military-led government and left-wing Farabundo Martí National Liberation Front. This brutal conflict was backed politically, economically, and militarily by the United States with CIA involvement.
Throughout these pages, you will experience intense trials of courageous survival with unforgettable characters who yearn for peace, justice, and normalcy. One of the brave women you will meet is Estella Godwin Lozano (a Waorani tribe descendant of the Amazon rain forest), who suffered terribly before her brutal demise in Laredo, Texas in 2019. She was a “little person” who became traumatically affected by the abuse perpetrated by National Guard soldiers outside her pueblo home. She heroically joined the Sandinistas (Cuban-backed guerillas) to seek revenge upon the villains of her country.
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I created an original book tag and am super excited about it! I present to you the Barking Bout Books Tag!! My dog Max recently passed away and I decided to make this book tag in remembrance of him. I would love to see your renditions of this tag! Let me know in the comments below what you think of the tag. Check out the video below:
